Donald Trump's bold vision for reshaping the electoral map may be hampered by his own 'malpractice'

For much of his nearly year-old presidential campaign, Donald
Trump bragged about his ability to best his Republican rivals
without even hiring a pollster.

But after he quietly hired his first high-profile data analyst,
The New York Times reported last week that the real-estate
magnate is considering bringing on more pollsters to help him
with a bold goal: Winning the Democratic-heavy state of New York.

While the Clinton campaign sees a map of 10 to 12 battleground
states, including some Rust Belt states like Ohio and
Pennsylvania, Trump's campaign claims he can be competitive in 15
states. That includes electorally rich, longtime Democratic
strongholds like New York and California.

But contrary to Trump's grand vision for winning the election on
the backs of white working-class voters in the Northeast, it's
not clear this will prove to be a winning strategy. And he may,
in the end, be hampered by his own campaign apparatus — or lack
thereof.

"So far things are looking more simple than he is making out,"
Princeton University professor and polling expert Sam Wang told
Business Insider.

Last week, a new series of Bloomberg state polls found that
middle-income voters in Rust Belt states like
Michigan, Wisconsin, and Ohio backed Democratic presidential
frontrunner Hillary Clinton over Trump by 7 points. The group of
voters is a key bloc that represents a large portion of the
electorate in northern Rust Belt states — nearly 40% of eligible
voters who cast ballots in the three states in recent elections,
according to Bloomberg.

Many surveys conducted over the past several months have shown
Clinton with a healthy lead in states like
Michigan and
Wisconsin, though Trump has climbed in national polls in
recent weeks, suggesting the numbers may soon tighten in
battleground states as well.

Trump's frequent assertion that he can woo working-class white
voters has startled some Democrats, who worry that Clinton's high
level of unpopularity and prolonged primary contest with Sen.
Bernie Sanders could damage the Democratic presidential
frontrunner.

But many of Clinton's allies are publicly panicking just yet.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told Business
Insider that he "rejects" the idea that Trump's rhetoric and
proposals on immigration will help him win Rust Belt states.

"Millennials, younger Americans, even those who are Gen X
overwhelmingly support immigration reform, even in the most
working class, Midwestern, Rust Belt states," Garcetti said on a
recent conference call.

Garcetti also warned that Trump's candidacy could permanently
damage the Republican Party's prospects in future elections. The
mayor cited the backlash to former California Gov. Pete Wilson's
successful 1994 push to deny public services to immigrants living
in the US illegally as proof of the political repercussions of
anti-immigration rhetoric.

"California was the home of Reagan and Nixon, and for many years
has been more libertarian than liberal, and has elected
conservatives," Garcetti said.

Wilson's 1994 reelection, he said, "resulted in a state now where
every single one of the state constitutional officers is a
Democrat. Where Latinos and many Asian Pacific Islanders and
other immigrants and people who believe in a diverse state don't
feel welcome in that party. I think that's what he runs the risk
of doing."

Indeed, early polls have suggested that Trump may have already
scrambled the map in a way that negatively affects his campaign.
Public-opinion surveys in Arizona and Georgia have displayed a
tighter race between Trump and Clinton, which many experts
attribute to Trump's inflammatory rhetoric along the campaign
trail.

Analysts say Trump's candidacy hasn't altered the electoral map
so far in the way the real-estate mogul claims he can.

Wang told Business Insider, in fact, that the electoral map
looks very similar to many recent presidential contests.

"Polls so far show almost every state in the same 'rank order'
... R's stronger in GA than NC, stronger in NC than PA, the same
order as in 2000-2012. All will be lifted together by the same
tide, or fall together."

'Campaign malpractice'

Trump is already promising to campaign hard in the Rust Belt
states. But some political observers say one of his biggest
hurdles may be his own seeming unwillingness to embrace modern
voter-targeting methods.

In an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month,
Trump said Obama's heralded 2008 and 2012 voter-turnout operation
was not as meaningful as his message.

"I've always felt it was overrated," Trump said. "Obama got the
votes much more so than his data-processing machine. And I think
the same is true with me."

Despite his apparent lack of interest in organizing and
sophisticated voter-turnout methods, Trump has dedicated
some resources to collecting and analyzing data.

But the operation has experienced significant turbulence in the
past several days. Last week, Trump abruptly fired Rick Wiley,
who told The Associated Press earlier this month he was working
with the Republican National Committee and was
hiring a team to hit the ground in Ohio.

Jeremy Bird, the former grassroots organizing architect of the
Obama campaigns, told Business Insider that Trump's inability to
professionalize his campaign — as well as his relative lack of
interest in voter-targeting data that could help him identify and
turn out sympathetic voters in swing states — is "campaign
malpractice."

"To not use the sophistication of 21st-century technology on the
data side, on the digital side, on the organizing side — I’m glad
he's doing it. It’s good for Democrats," said Bird, whose
political-consulting firm, 270
Strategies, is working with the Clinton campaign.

White
House via Flickr

Many top Democratic Party officials, such as Democratic National
Committee CEO Amy Dacey, contend that Democrats' investment in
collecting and updating voter information is one of the greatest
competitive advantages the party has over Trump.

"We’ve certainly been investing in this much longer than the
Republican Party, and I think that that’s been one place where
they need to catch up on this," Dacey told Business Insider in
February.

Some observers pointed out that even Trump's Republican opponents
in some states used data to successfully best Trump didn't reach
the level of sophistication of the Obama campaign in 2008 or
Clinton's campaign in 2016.

"Ted Cruz might have read the books on what we did, but Ted Cruz
didn’t do what we did," Bird said of the Texas senator. "He
didn’t even come close to doing what we did — he had less than
five offices in Iowa."

"If he actually read the book about what we did in the campaign,
he forgot basically page one to the last page. He didn’t do
anything that we did. None of those guys did," he added.

Still, Bird cautioned against overconfidence that organizing
alone can win a campaign.

He contended that it was Obama's message that resonated with
voters, and that organizing merely helped the campaign capitalize
on a popular message.

Trump is "right that data in and of itself isn’t going to win you
an election," Bird said.

"But I think it’s a huge important piece of the puzzle," he
added. "And it doesn’t make sense not to use everything in your
power to reach every last voter with your message and with your
candidate."